Tactics for Economies Dissent Panel Introduction by Brett Scott

Brett Scott is the moderator of this panel on ‘Tactics for Economies of Dissent’. He starts by introducing himself and the participants of the panel.

Scott’s field of research and writing incorporates financial reform and financial activism, which look at different attempts to change the current financial system. On one hand he is working with large scale organization such as United Nation of Principles for Responsible Investments (UNPRI) an organization that tries to move governments and big investors in the sustainable global financial system or “try to shift the titanic” summed up by Scott. It is really hard and long term process which often involves a lot of compromises pointed by Scott. On the other hand Brett also works with small scale alternative community currencies which might impact only certain amount of people who completely ignore the mainstream economic system. The main questions Scott addresses is how do you blend together economic disruption, which have an impact to the mainstream but lacks a political vision while maintaining some radical impulse or creating a true disruption initiated by smaller groups of individuals. What are the ways to negotiate all these issues ?

Brett introduces the first speaker Enric Duran – a political activist best known for his civil disobedience against the banks or more particularly his act of taking loans from 39 banks in Spain and distributing the money to different activist groups, for which he has being prosecuted till present. In 2010 he initiated Catalan Integral Cooperative (CIC) – a grass root network of cooperatives, which uses innovative technologies and legal systems in order to create alternative economic system. Scott recommends an online article on Vice magazine “On the Lam with Bank Robber Enric Duran” written by Nathan Schneider, which tells the story of Eric, how he started building the platform and about his ongoing project named Fair Coop.

The second speaker at the conference is Pekko Koskinen. He specializes in so called whooping the structure of reality. He mostly works in collaborative group named Reality Research Center where he creates game alike experiences to play with what we understand of reality. In this context he will talk about Robin Hood Minor Asset Management project, which was also presented in a workshop at the afternoon session at the MoneyLab#2.

The next speaker is Rachel O’Dwer. She curated a festival called “openhere” – a critical notion of technology, peer productions and open source culture, which has similar vibe to MoneyLab, as pointed out by Scot. O’Dwer is an editor of an open access, peer reviewed journal named Interference – a journal for Audio Culture. She is also collaborating in the Peer-to-Peer Network Foundation. She is a post-doctoral researcher and lecturer in the School of Computer Science in Trinity College Dublin. Rachel occasionally writes about digital media, political economy of communications, and the commons. Her research fields include mobile communications and radio spectrum, open networks and alternative currencies, blog chains, cryptocurrencies.

Last but not least the “troublemakers” Dmytri Kleiner and Baruch Gottlieb, as described by Scott. They are part of Telekommunisten Network – an art collective critically engaged with telecommunication technologies through arts and critical theory. Dmytri is the author of Telecomunismt Manifesto, a print-on-demand publication by Institute of Network Cultures). He is the inventor of the terms ‘copyfarleft’ and ‘venture communism’. Baruch Gottlieb is a filmmaker who works in the realm of digital arts. He is the author of “A Political Economy of The Smallest Things”. He is lecturer at the Institute of Time-Based Media at the University of Arts, Berlin.

Scot concluded the introduction of the panel by saying that with this diverse range of speakers the actual affiliations do not really matter because of they all come together to complement each other.